Progressives Need Communication Infrastructure

David C. Johnson

Uncommon Denominator, Vol. 2.2, June 2003

It's becoming clearer every day that moderates and progressives need a more effective way to get their message out. The reason the Right has been so effective at getting their message out, and getting their politicians elected, and getting their policies enacted, is that they've established an extremely well-funded idea-development and communications infrastructure that has been called "The Mighty Wurlitzer." This infrastructure consists of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute; radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh; TV pundits on Fox News; newspapers like the Washington Times and New York Post, publishing houses like Regnery; and a variety of other organizations.

All of this constitutes an "infrastructure" because it is already set up and in place, ready to amplify and disseminate any message that the conservative movement's ideological leaders feed into it. Moderates and progressives, meanwhile, don't have anything comparable in place. That has to change!

Politicians respond to the public - that's their job. So: to change the country's political climate, we need to change public attitudes, not just rely on politicians. This is how the Right has accomplished so much. They have pursued a decades-long strategy of using the media to inundate the public with ideological messages, year by year nudging the public further to the right - thus enabling their politicians to move in and harvest the results.

Consider the Right's efforts to undermine public education. For many years they have been pumping out the message that "public schools are failing," and - lo and behold - a consensus forms that the public schools are failing. In turn, since "failure" implies that there's nothing left to be done, conservative politicians can more successfully promote school vouchers, rather than seeking to improve public education through greater investments in teachers, classroom materials, and physical facilities. Moreover, this is taking place in the larger context of the conservative campaign to promote all forms of privatization while demonizing government services - and thus the specific policy of vouchers gets greater traction in a broader messaging environment.

Now, compare that to, say, health care reform. Americans have not been widely exposed, to say the least, to moderate and progressive critiques of the health care system. Consequently, there is no widespread perception of a problem that calls for progressive solutions. Those politicians who advocate health care reform must - from scratch, during the election cycle - seek to explain the nature of problem and then try to enlist public support for proposals. On the center-Left, the burden rests with elected leaders because a broad base of public support for their ideas has not already been developed by a comparable communications infrastructure. It's like reinventing the wheel while swimming upstream! And that's where the Commonweal Institute comes in....

The conservative movement infrastructure was set up by a core group of right-wing activists - including Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors, and Rupert Murdoch, among others - with a clear vision and tons of money. That infrastructure now consists of hundreds of organizations, both large and small, with some differences between them, but with a remarkable consistency of strategy and message. These organizations all exist because of the fierce determination and funding power of a relatively small number of people.

But you might be surprised to know that there's also plenty of moderate and progressive money. Why, then, is the Right so much more effective? Because it has focused its money on creating a network of advocacy organizations whose shared goal is to develop public support for far-right ideology. An emphasis on general operating funding, with the money flowing year after year, ensures that these organizations can spend less time raising money and more time pursuing their ideological agenda.

By contrast, moderate and progressive philanthropists traditionally fund specific, narrowly-defined projects with limited objectives rather than the general operations of organizations. This system of "program funding" evolved as an efficient way to apply scarce resources to projects for which there was a public consensus of support, such as helping the poor or protecting the environment.

Times have changed, however. The Right's ideology machine has undermined that public support, with the result that the program-funding system is becoming less effective. For example, imagine a 10-year, $500,000-per-year program to protect a redwood grove. Then a government official decides that the best way to prevent forest fires is to remove the trees, and can rely on the conservative infrastructure to get that message out to the public. Next thing you know, the redwood grove is gone, and the $5,000,000 was spent in vain. Meanwhile, local right-wing radio personalities mock the program's funders as "environmental wackos" or "eco-terrorists," and people picket the funders' offices carrying signs saying they are "anti-capitalist" or even "anti-American."

Traditional program funding was not designed to counter this sort of coordinated assault from the Right, and the conservative movement, with its allied politicians, is carrying out an agenda of dismantling moderate and progressive policies and programs that have taken decades to put into place. Moderates and progressives must build our own idea-development and communications infrastructure that will move public attitudes back toward the principles that are so important to all of us: environmental protection, economic justice, separation of church and state, accessible health care, excellent public education, a comprehensive approach to national security.

Moderates and progressives need multi-issue, strategic communications organizations like the Commonweal Institute to expand the underlying base of support for our principles. We must reach the general public with messages and information designed to move them back from the right. This will grow the base of support for candidates and organizations that will protect the programs we care about.

Moderates and progressives need to focus attention—and money—on building organizations that will counter the ideological propaganda of the Right, organizations that can defend the programs they care so much about. This will be their most effective way to make a real difference at this turning point in the history of American democracy.